State v. Miyasaki

614 P.2d 915, 62 Haw. 269
CourtHawaii Supreme Court
DecidedAugust 4, 1980
DocketNO. 7288
StatusPublished
Cited by37 cases

This text of 614 P.2d 915 (State v. Miyasaki) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Hawaii Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Miyasaki, 614 P.2d 915, 62 Haw. 269 (haw 1980).

Opinion

*270 OPINION OF THE COURT BY

NAKAMURA, J.

This case reaches us on an interlocutory appeal from an order of the Circuit Court of the Third Circuit denying defendant-appellant’s motion to dismiss an indictment charging a violation of HRS § 710-1072.5, Obstruction of Justice. 1 The indictment arose from his refusal to cooperate in a grand jury investigation of illicit gambling on the island of Hawaii. The issue presented is the constitutionality of a section of the state’s general witness immunity statute that provides immunity in exchange for potentially incriminating information from a witness. More precisely, the question is whether a section of the foregoing statute which forbids the direct or indirect use of any evidence obtained through compulsion authorized thereunder affords immunity that is coextensive with the protection bestowed by the Constitution of the State of Hawaii.

I.

Defendant-appellant was summoned as a witness before the Grand Jury of the Third Circuit and there interrogated about his gambling on the results of football games over a period of several months in 1978 and 1979. These activities were already the basis of a criminal charge then pending against him in the District Court of the Third Circuit. Anticipating the assertion of a privilege against self-incrimination *271 under the Constitutions of the United States and of the State of Hawaii, the prosecutor had earlier sought and obtained, pursuant to HRS chapter 621C, an ex parte order from the circuit court compelling testimony and granting the witness immunity. The immunity granted was the use and derivative use immunity described in HRS § 621C-3 2 and not the transactional immunity provided by § 621C-4. 3

At the outset the witness was advised of his constitutional privilege. When the prosecutor’s inquiries progressed beyond a preliminary stage, the expected claim of privilege ensued. The prosecutor thereupon informed the witness the circuit court had actually negated his privilege through the foregoing grant of immunity pursuant to HRS § 621C-3, handed him the court’s order, and proceeded to “explain” it. The written order essentially reiterated § 62lC-3’s terms but the prosecutor’s “explanation” was an attenuated version of the order. 4 The order was then read aloud by the foreman of *272 the grand jury, who also, upon the direction of the prosecutor, ordered the witness to respond to the prosecutor’s questions. The witness admitted earlier betting on football games but balked at naming the “bookie” with whom he had placed bets during the 1977-78 football season. He was also interrogated on prior statements allegedly made to the police about the identity of the “bookie” but declined to confirm them.

The prosecutor elected to seek a criminal penalty for the recalcitrant conduct rather than civil enforcement of the order and secured an indictment charging a violation of HRS § 710-1072.5. Defendant-appellant moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that HRS § 621C-3, the statutory basis for the order, violated Article I, Section 8 of the state constitution and was unconstitutional on its face. 5 The circuit court found the section facially valid and denied the motion. The court, however, authorized an appeal from the order denying the motion, pursuant to HRS § 641-17 which permits an appeal from an interlocutory order in a criminal case where the appeal would result in a more speedy termination of the case.

Defendant-appellant contends HRS § 621C-3 is invalid because the use and derivative use immunity provided thereunder is not coterminous with the privilege against self-incrimination bestowed by Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution of the State of Hawaii. A review of the statutory and constitutional provisions at issue, in light of the fundamental *273 values underlying the privilege and of its historical development, convinces us that defendant-appellant’s contention is correct.

H.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution of the State of Hawaii state in pertinent part that:

No person shall... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself (oneself) . . .

The values underlying this privilege or right are fundamental to law and liberty and some of the ideals in the complex of values supporting it were delineated by Justice Goldberg in Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52 (1964), when he said:

The privilege against self-incrimination “registers an important advance in the development of our liberty — ‘one of the great landmarks in man’s struggle to make himself civilized. ’ ” Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 426. It reflects many of our fundamental values and most noble aspirations: our unwillingness to subject those suspected of crime to the cruel trilemma of self-accusation, perjury or contempt; our preference for an accusa-torial rather than an inquisitorial system of criminal justice; our fear that self-incriminating statements will be elicited by inhumane treatment and abuses; our sense of fair play which dictates “afair state-individual balance by requiring the government to leave the individual alone until good cause is shown for disturbing him and by requiring the government in its contest with the individual to shoulder the entire load,” 8 Wigmore, Evidence (McNaughton rev., 1961), 317; our respect for the inviolability of the human personality and of the right of each individual “to a private enclave where he may lead a private Life,” United States v. Grunewald, 233 F.2d 556, 581-582 (Frank, J., dissenting), rev’d 353 U.S. 391; our distrust of self-deprecatory statements; and our realization that the privilege, while sometimes “a shelter to the *274

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Bluebook (online)
614 P.2d 915, 62 Haw. 269, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-miyasaki-haw-1980.